The Most “Health Conscious” Fast Food Restaurants

National chain restaurants, both fast food and casual dining style, tend to vacillate between pretending to have “healthy” options and and coming up with new and creative ways to serve bacon. The wavering might not end soon, but it looks as though a move toward phony “health consciousness” is getting trendy. And I’m into it. I can’t expect fast food restaurants to start serving, like, actually healthy food– I’ll take what I can get.

Here are the “most Health Conscious” food brands based on Forbes’ recent “Customer Loyalty Engagement Index.” The percentage is related to how the restaurant rated compared to the 100% customer ideal:

Subway 93%

Panera 92%

Olive Garden/Red Lobster 90%

Chick-fil-A 89%

McDonald’s 87%

Chipolte/Ruby Tuesday 85%

Wendy’s/Applebee’s 83%

Burger King/Chili’s 80%

KFC 79%

Arby’s/IHOP 77%

Taco Bell 75%

Soon, restaurants with 20 or more locations will have to disclose their calories counts, in an effort to help food consumers be more health conscious. Some people are not into the FDA mandate, but like our own Sam Escobar, I’m down with it. It doesn’t hurt anyone to be able to know the nutritional content of the foods their consuming. Even if you aren’t watching your caloric intake, it can be helpful to just keep in mind. Maybe this is going a little far, but readily available nutritional informal could potentially save lives; for instance, should a diabetic person want to know how many grams of sugar and item they wish to eat has, it should be easily accessible. I don’t really understand the drawbacks of having calorie information posted on menus, can someone explain them to me please?

Those who don’t care about calories or health, won’t care. They won’t bother or take a second look at the nutrition listings. Those who do care, already know, but it will just make it easier to know more. Those who might care, will peek, and maybe will be shocked and will adopt a healthier attitude towards their food choices!